(as we have seen) an ever-pressing problem in Greece, it is no wonder
that land-hunger, leading to wars for territory, and land-grabbing,
a fertile cause of internal dissension and seditions in states, were
normal phenomena of Greek history. And what happened in old Hellas was
reproduced abroad, as the Greek colonists overflowed into lands beyond
the seas. Once the possession of territory was secured by war, and the
means of its defence organized, two problems soon presented themselves
for solution. It was at once necessary to decide by what labour the land
was to be cultivated. Greek colonists, desirous no doubt of an easier
life than they had led in the old country, generally contrived to devolve
this labour upon others at a very early stage of their establishment.
Either they reduced natives to the condition of serfs, or they employed
slaves, whom the profits of growing trade and commerce enabled them to
procure in larger and larger numbers. Meanwhile in the mother country
various systems went on side by side. There were large districts of
agricultural serfage, in which a race of conquerors were supported by the
labour of the conquered. In other parts independent peoples, backward in
civilization, lived a free rustic life of a largely pastoral character.
Others again devoted themselves more to the tillage of the soil, with
or without the help of slaves. It was known that in earlier times a
population of this kind in Attica had long existed, and that after the
unification of Attica and the reforms of Solon it had for a time been the
backbone of the Athenian state. But in fertile lowland districts there
was a not unnatural tendency towards larger estates, worked by hireling
or slave-labour. It seems fairly certain that in Attica before the time
of Aristotle the supply of free wage-earners for farm-work was failing:
the development of the city and the Peiraeus, and the growing number of
those in receipt of civil and military pay, had drawn the poor citizen
away from rustic labour. Nor is there reason to think that after the loss
of empire there was any marked movement back to the land on the part of
free labourers or even small farmers. It would rather seem that Attic
land was passing into fewer hands, and that the employment of stewards or
overseers, free or slave, was one of the features of a change by which
the farming of land was becoming a symptom of considerable wealth.
But beside the decision as to labour there was the question as to a means
of checking land-monopoly. Such monopoly, resulting in the formation
of a discontented urban mob, was a serious menace to the stability of
a constitution. For all poor citizens to get a living by handicrafts
was perhaps hardly possible; nor would the life of an artisan suit the
tastes and wishes of all. Nature does (or seems to do) more for the
farmer on his holding than for the artisan in his workshop, and the
claim to a share of the land within the boundaries of their states had
led to seditions and revolutions, ruinous and bloody, followed by ill
feeling, and ever liable to recur. Colonial states, in which the first
settlers usually allotted the land (or most of it) among themselves
and handed down their allotments to their children, were particularly
exposed to troubles of this kind. The various fortunes of families, and
the coming of new settlers, early raised the land-question there in an
acute form, as notoriously at Syracuse. No wonder that practical and
theoretical statesmen tried to find remedies for a manifest political
evil. Stability was only to be assured by internal peace. To this end two
main lines of policy[379] found favour. Security of tenure was promoted
by forbidding the sale of land-lots or making it difficult to encumber
them by mortgages: while the prohibition of excessive acquisition[380]
was a means of checking land-grabbers and interesting a larger number of
citizens in the maintenance of the land-system. But there is no reason
to think that measures of this kind had much success. Nor were vague
traditions[381] of the equality of original land-lots in some Greek
states of any great importance. Some theoretical reformers might aim
at such an arrangement, but it was a vain aspiration. Indeed, regarded
from the food-producing point of view, nothing like a true equality was
possible in practice. Confiscation and redistribution were only to be
effected at the cost of civil war, and the revered wisdom of Solon[382]
had rejected such a proceeding. Communistic schemes had little attraction
for the average Greek, so far as his own labour or interests might be
involved: even the dream of Plato was far from a thoroughgoing communism.
Of the farmer in his character of citizen[383] Aristotle had a favourable
impression formed from the experience of the past. The restless activity
of Assemblies frequently meeting, and with fees for attendance, was both
a cause and an effect of the degeneration of democracies in his day. It
meant that political issues were now at the mercy of the ignorant and
fickle city-dwellers, a rabble swayed by the flattery of self-seeking
demagogues. Athens was the notable instance. Yet tradition alleged (and
it can hardly be doubted) that in earlier times, when a larger part of
the civic body lived and worked in the country, a soberer and steadier
policy[384] prevailed. The farmers, never free from responsibilities and
cares, were opposed to frequent Assemblies, to attend which involved
no small sacrifice of valuable time. For this sacrifice a small fee
would have been no adequate compensation, and in fact they had none
at all. Naturally enough Aristotle, admitting[385] that in the states
of his day democratic governments were mostly inevitable, insists on
the merits of the farmer-democracies of the good old times, and would
welcome their revival. But the day for this was gone by, never to return.
Another important point arises in connexion with the capacity of the
state for war, a point seldom overlooked in Greek political speculation.
In discussing the several classes out of which the state is made up,
Aristotle observes[386] that individuals may and will unite in their
own persons the qualifications of more than one class. So the same
individuals may perform various functions: but this does not affect his
argument, for the same persons may be, and often are, both hoplites and
cultivators, who yet are functionally distinct parts of the state. Just
below, speaking of the necessity of ‘virtue’ (ἀρετὴ) for the discharge of
certain public duties (deliberative and judicial), he adds ‘The other
faculties may exist combined in many separate individuals; for instance,
the same man may be a soldier a cultivator and a craftsman, or even a
counsellor of state or a judge; but all men claim to possess virtue, and
think they are qualified to hold most offices. But the same men cannot be
at once rich and poor. The common view therefore is that Rich and Poor
are the true _parts_ of a state.’ That is to say, practical analysis can
go no further. In another passage[387], discussing the formation of the
best kind of democracy, he says ‘for the best Demos is that of farmers
(ὁ γεωργικός): so it is possible to form (a corresponding?) democracy
where the mass of the citizens gets its living from tillage or pasturage
(ἀπὸ γεωργίας ἢ νομῆς).’ After considering the political merits of the
cultivators, busy and moderate men, he goes[388] on ‘And after the Demos
of cultivators the next best is that where the citizens are graziers
(νομεῖς) and get their living from flocks and herds (βοσκημάτων): for
the life in many respects resembles that of the tillers of the soil,
and for the purposes of military campaigning these men are peculiarly
hardened[389] by training, fit for active service, and able to rough
it in the open.’ The adaptability of the rustic worker is further
admitted[390] in a remark let fall in a part of his treatise where he is
engaged in designing a model state. It is to the effect that, so long as
the state has a plentiful supply of farm-labourers, it must also have
plenty of seamen (ναυτῶν). Having just admitted that a certain amount
of maritime commerce will be necessary, and also a certain naval power,
he is touching on the manning of the fleet. The marine soldiers will
be freemen, but the seamen (oarsmen) can be taken from unfree classes
working on the land. Their social status does not at this stage concern
us: that such labourers could readily be made into effective oarsmen is
an admission to be noted. To the philosopher himself it is a comfort
to believe that he has found out a way of doing without the turbulent
‘seafaring rabble’ (ναυτικὸς ὄχλος) that usually throngs seaport towns
and embarrasses orderly governments. In other words, it is a relief to
find that in a model state touching the sea it will not be necessary to
reproduce the Peiraeus.
In considering the proposals of earlier theorists for the remedy of
political defects it is hardly possible and nowise needful to exhaust all
the indications of dissatisfaction with existing systems. Of Euripides
and Socrates, the two great questioners, enough has been said above. The
reactionary Isocrates was for many years a contemporary of Aristotle.
What we can no longer reproduce is the talk of active-minded critics
in the social circles of Athens. It happens that Xenophon has left us a
sketch of the ordinary conversations of Socrates. No doubt these were
the most important examples of their kind, and his method a powerful, if
sometimes irritating, stimulus to thought. But we are not to assume a
lack of other questioners, acute and even sincere, more especially among
men of oligarchic leanings. That Aristotle came into touch with such
persons is probable from his connexion with Plato. Certain passages in
the _Constitution of Athens_, in which he is reasonably suspected[391]
of giving a partisan view of historical events, point to the same
conclusion. We shall never know all the criticisms and suggestions of
others that this watchful collector heard and noted. But it is both
possible and desirable to recall those to which his own record proves him
to have paid attention.
Both Hippodamus and Plato based their schemes on a class-system, in which
the farmer-class form a distinct body: but the former made them citizens
with voting rights. Being unarmed, and so at the mercy of the military
class, Aristotle held that their political rights were nugatory. In
the _Republic_, Plato gave them no voice in state-affairs, but in the
_Laws_ he admitted them to the franchise. While these two reformers made
provision for a military force, Phaleas, ignoring relations with other
states, made none. To Phaleas, equality in landed estate seemed the best
means of promoting harmony and wellbeing in the community; and he would
effect this equality by legal restrictions. This proposition Aristotle
rejected as neither adequate nor suited to its purpose. Moral[392]
influences, hard work, discretion, even intellectual activity, can alone
produce the temper of moderation that promotes concord and happiness. In
short, if you are to effect any real improvement, you must start from
the doctrine of the Mean[393] and not trust to material equalizing. The
several tenure of land-lots was generally recognized, with variations
in detail; Plato in the _Laws_ abandoned the impracticable land-system
of the _Republic_, and not only assigned a κλῆρος to each citizen
household, but arranged it in two[394] sections, for reasons given above.
The attempt to ensure the permanence of the number of land-lots and
households by strict legal regulation, as some legislators had tried to
do, is also a general feature of these speculations. Plato in the _Laws_
even went further, and would place rigid restrictions on acquisition of
property of all kinds. All agree in the usual Greek contempt for those
engaged in manual or sedentary trades. Such ‘mechanical’ (βάναυσοι)
workers were held to be debased in both body and mind below the standard
of ‘virtue’ required of the good soldier or citizen. Phaleas made these
‘artisans’ public slaves _de iure_: Hippodamus placed them, with the
farmers, in nominal citizenship but _de facto_ bondage. Plato tolerates
them because he cannot do without them. In the matter of hard bodily
labour, free or slave, the position of Plato is clear. He would devolve
it upon slaves; in agriculture, with a coexisting alternative system
of serf-tenants. But both classes are to be Barbarians. It seems that
Hippodamus meant the public, if not the private, land of his model
state to be worked by slaves. Most striking is the fact that Plato in
his later years combined the aim of self-sufficiency with dependence on
servile labour. Commerce is, for the moral health of the state, to be
strictly limited. The supply of necessary food-stuffs is to be a domestic
industry, carried on by alien serfs or slaves for the most part. Such
communism as exists among the Guardians in the _Republic_ is a communism
of consumers who take no part in material production: and it is abandoned
in the _Laws_.
The above outlines must suffice as a sketch of the situation both in
practice and in theory when Aristotle took the matter in hand. The
working defects of Greek constitutions were obvious to many, and the
incapacity of the ignorant masses in democracies was especially evident
to thoughtful but irresponsible critics. Yet the selfishness of the
rich in oligarchies was not ignored, and the instability of governments
supported by only a minority of the citizens was an indisputable fact.
The mass of citizens (that is, full members of the state according to the
qualification-rules in force) had to come in somewhere, to give numerical
strength to a government. How was governing capacity to be placed in
power under such conditions? Experience suggested that things had been
better for Athens when a larger part of her citizens lived on the land.
Use could no doubt be made of this experience in case an opening for
increasing the number of peasant farmers[395] should occur. But it was
precisely in states where such a policy was most needed that an opening
was least likely to occur. It would seem then that the only chance of
improving government lay in persuading the average citizen to entrust
wider powers to a specially selected body of competent men, in short to
carry into politics the specializing principle[396] already developed by
the advance of civilization in other departments. Now the average citizen
was certain to test the plans of reformers by considering how their
operation would affect cases like his own. It was therefore necessary
to offer him a reassuring picture of projects of this kind, if they
were to receive any hearing at all. To own a plot of land, inalienable
and hereditary, was a security against indigence. To have the labour of
cultivating it performed as a matter of course by others was a welcome
corollary. To be relieved of mechanical drudgery by aliens and slaves
was a proposal sure to conciliate Greek pride. And the resulting leisure
for the enlightened discharge of the peculiarly civic functions of war
and government was an appeal to self-esteem and ambition. But that the
creation of a ruling class of Guardians with absolute power, such as
those of Plato’s _Republic_, would commend itself to democratic Greeks,
was more than any practical man could believe. Nor would the communism
of those Guardians appear attractive to the favourers of oligarchy.
Therefore Plato himself had to recast his scheme, and try to bring it
out of dreamland by concessions to facts of Greek life. Not much was
gained thereby, and the great difficulty, how to make a start, still
remained. That much could be done by direct legislative action was a
tradition in Greek thought fostered by tales of the achievements of early
lawgivers. But to remodel the whole fabric of a state so thoroughly that
an entire change should be effected in the political atmosphere in which
the citizens must live and act, while the citizens themselves would be
the same persons, reared in old conditions and ideas, was a project far
beyond the scope of ordinary legislation. To Aristotle it seemed that the
problem must be approached differently.
This is not the place to discuss the two distinct lines taken by him;
first, that the character of the state depends on that of its members,
and secondly, that the individual only finds his true self as member of
a state. The subject has been fully[397] treated, better than I could
treat it; and in constructing a model there remains the inevitable
difficulty, where to begin. The highest development of the individual
is only attainable under the training provided by the model state, and
this state is only possible as an association of model citizens. If we
may conjecture Aristotle’s answer from a rule[398] laid down in the
_Ethics_, he would say ‘first learn by doing, and then you can do what
you have learnt to do.’ That is, effort (at first imperfect) will improve
faculty, and by creating habit will develope full capacity. But even so
it would remain uncertain whether the individual, starting on a career of
self-improvement, is to work up to the making of a model state, or the
imperfect state to start training its present citizens to perfection.
The practical difficulty is there still. Nor is it removed by putting
the first beginnings of training so early[399] that they even precede
the infant citizen’s birth, in the form of rules for eugenic breeding.
Aristotle’s procedure is to postulate favourable equipment, geographical
and climatic, a population of high qualities (that is, Greek,) and then
to consider how he would organize the state and train its members—if the
postulated conditions were realized and he had a free hand. In this new
Utopia it is most significant to observe what he adopts from historical
experience and the proposals of earlier theorists, and in what respects
he departs from them. It is in particular his attitude towards ownership
and tillage of land, and labour in general, that is our present concern.
As it follows from his doctrine of the Mean that the virtue of the state
and its several members must be based on the avoidance of extremes, so it
follows[400] from the moral aim of the state that its component elements
are not all ‘parts’ of the state in the same strict sense. Economically,
those who provide food clothing etc are parts, necessary to the existence
of the community. Politically (for politics have a moral end) they are
below the standard of excellence required for a share in the government
of a perfect state. They cannot have the leisure or the training to fit
them for so responsible a charge. Therefore they cannot be citizens. To
maintain secure independence and internal order the citizens, and the
citizens only, must bear arms. And, since the land must belong to the
possessors of arms, none but citizens can own land. This does not imply
communism. There will have to be public[401] land, from the produce of
which provision will be made for the service of religion and for the
common tables at which citizens will mess. To maintain these last by
individual contributions would be burdensome to the poor and tend to
exclude them. For rich and poor there will be. But the evil of extreme
poverty will be avoided. There will be private land, out of which each
citizen (that is evidently each citizen-household) will have an allotment
of land. This κλῆρος will be in two[402] parcels, one near the city
and the other near the state-frontier, so that issues of peace and war
may not be affected by the bias of local interests. The cultivation of
these allotments will be the work of subjects, either inhabitants of
the district (περίοικοι) or slaves; in any case aliens, not Greeks; and
in the case of slaves care must be taken not to employ too many of the
same race together or such as are high-spirited. He is concerned to
secure the greatest efficiency and to leave the least possible facilities
for rebellion. The labourers will belong to the state or to individual
citizens according to the proprietorship of the land on which they
are severally employed. By these arrangements he has provided for the
sustenance of those who in the true political sense are ‘parts’ of the
state (πόλις), and for their enjoyment of sufficient leisure[403] to
enable them to conduct its government in the paths of virtue and promote
the good life (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) which is the final cause of state existence.
The citizens then have the arms and the land and all political power.
Among themselves they are on an equal footing, only divided functionally
according to age: deliberative and judicial duties belonging to the elder
men, military activities to the younger. It is impossible to overlook
the influence of the Spartan system on the speculations of Aristotle as
well as those of Plato. The equality of Spartan citizens was regarded
as evidence[404] of a democratic element in their constitution, and we
find this same theoretical equality among the full citizens at any given
moment in the developing constitution of Rome. It is significant that
Aristotle felt the necessity of such an equality. He remarks[405] that
the permanence of a constitution depends on the will of the possessors
of arms. We may observe that he seldom refers to the mercenaries so
commonly employed in his day, save as his bodyguard of usurping tyrants.
But in one passage[406] he speaks of oligarchies being driven to employ
them at a pinch for their own security against the Demos, and of their
own overthrow in consequence. Therefore he did not ignore the risk run
by relying on hirelings: naturally he would prefer to keep the military
service of his model state in the hands of his model citizens. But he
had no belief[407] in the blind devotion of Sparta to mere preparation
for warfare. Peace is the end of war, not war of peace. If you do not
learn to make a proper use of peace, in the long run you will fail in war
also: hence the attainment of empire was the ruin of Sparta: she had not
developed the moral qualities needed for ruling in time of peace. But in
his model state he seems not to make adequate provision for the numbers
required in war. His agricultural labourers are not to be employed in
warfare, as the Laconian Helots regularly were. He only admits them to
the service of the oar, controlled by the presence of marine soldiers,
who are free citizens like the poorer class of Athenians who generally
served in that capacity. The servile character of rustic labour on his
plan is thus reasserted, and with it the superior standing of land forces
as compared with maritime. The days were past when Athenians readily
served at the oar in their own triremes, cruising among the subject
states and certain of an obsequious reception in every port. Hired
rowers had always been employed to some extent, even by Athens: in this
later period the motive power of war-gallies of naval states was more
and more obtained from slaves. There was an economic analogy between
farm-labour and oar-labour. The slave was forced to toil for practically
no more[408] than his food: the profits of the farm and the profits of
war-booty fell to be shared in either case by few.
Aristotle, who was well aware of the merits of the working farmer, the
peasant citizen, and recognized that such men had been a sound and
stable element in the Athens of former days, would surely not have
treated agriculture as a work reserved for servile hands, had he not been
convinced that the old rural economy was gone and could never be revived.
For, if suggestions from Sparta influenced him when designing Utopian
institutions, it is no less clear that the Utopian setting—territory,
city, port-town,—are merely modifications of Attica, Athens, Peiraeus. In
Greece there was no state so favoured geographically, so well equipped
by nature for independence prosperity and power. If a Greek community
was ever to realize an artistic ideal, and live in peaceful and secure
moderation a model life of dignity and virtue, it could hardly have a
better chance of success than in some such advantageous position as that
enjoyed by Athens. Her defects lay in her institutions, such as he viewed
them at their present stage of development. These could not be approved
as they stood: they needed both political and economic reform. Into the
former we need not enter here: the later democracy could not but disgust
one who judged merit from the standpoint of his doctrine of the Mean.
Economically, we may infer from his own model project that two great
changes would be required. Citizens must all have an interest in the
land, though farmed by slave labour. The port-town must no longer be a
centre of promiscuous commerce, thronged with a cosmopolitan population
of merchants seamen dock-labourers etc and the various purveyors who
catered for their various appetites. In truth the Peiraeus was a
stumbling-block to him as to Plato, and probably to most men[409] who did
not themselves draw income from its trade or its iniquities, or who did
not derive political power from the support of its democratic citizens.
To have a state ‘self-sufficing’ so far as to get its necessary food from
its own territory, and to limit commerce to a moderate traffic sufficient
to procure by exchange such things as the citizens wanted but could not
produce (for instance[410] timber), was a philosopher’s aspiration.